Catching Up . . .

This is a hodge podge of recent pictures that I haven't taken time to post.

The Saturday before IHC, Aaron and I along with Mark and Kristin sang at Auburn Bible Methodist Church for a revival service. Afterward we ate at Skyline with Jeremy & Lisa Robison and Angie Burton. I love Skyline and have eaten their many times, but, this was the first time I ever knew they had ice cream cones!! These are actually mini cones. They are so tiny but cute and the perfect size to complement a 3-way. Really - I think they are for the kids, but they sold them to us for 50 cents each. :-)

I really enjoyed IHC this year - especially since my 2 sisters were there!

This is what you would call 3 kids in a packed van!

The cousins always enjoy playing dress up. We had hardly been at Jeff's house for an hour when they came downstairs looking like this.

Drew meeting his new cousin, Karson, for the first time. They already look like buds to me!

The awesome flowers from my boss on Administrative Professionals Day!

It was the perfect weather for the GBS picnic last Thursday!

Mark Cravens was the favorite pitcher!

Aaron loves playing with Jake (Ron and Jennee's dog). I thought it was so funny to see Jake drinking out of a water bottle.

Welcome to the World!

My new niece, Emme Grace Englund, was born yesterday, April 26! Congrats to Jeff and Vicki and her 4 older siblings: Drew, Caleb, Kaley, and Camen.

Kaley finally has a sister!

Camen already adores his little sister - he wanted to hold her all the time and kept patting her.

Camen was so funny - he kept counting her toes.

While Jeff and Vicki were at the hospital, Aaron and I kept the other 4 kids. We had a lot of fun playing games like Uno Attack and Bingo, we made homemade sugar cookies, we went up to the church for a few more family pictures for the new church directory, Aaron took them to the park after we got home, and then we got to go to the hospital to see the new arrival.

Camen enjoyed having his "own" dough - he did cut out a few cookies, but was mainly more interested in poking the dough.

Senior Time!

Last night I had the privilege of taking Rachel Crissinger's senior pictures and we had so much fun! She was so easy going and excellent to work with.

I had a really hard time sorting the pictures because I took so many - I just couldn't stop. Here are a few of my favorites.

A Whirlwind of Activity

A host of pictures . . .

Last Saturday we went to Findlay Market for the very first time. I absolutely loved it and can't wait to go back. It's so much more than just fruits and vegetables. I can't believe we have lived here for 5 years and just now discovered the goodness of this place.

They had salsa, soap, honey, flowers, woodworking, baskets, meat, cheese, bread, spices, waffles, desserts, fudge, bakeries, and a host of other items.

Late that afternoon our church had a surprise retirement party for our pastor's wife, Mrs. Durr, at Karen's house. Surprised she was! It was fun.

There was one small catastrophe that happened with the chocolate fountain. Mrs. Wingham was overseeing the process of melting the chocolate and the three tiers had lovely chocolate cascading down. All of a sudden the piece in the middle rose up about 4-5 inches and the fountain was still spinning! I never heard so many people scream and scurry. There was chocolate flying all over the place (as you can see in the above picture - which was taken after it was stopped). It was terrible and funny all at the same time.


Later on that night, we met at Ron and Jennee's house for a surprise birthday party for Mark Foster.

Kristin made this incredible dessert that was delicious!!

Jennee, Katie, me, Kristin

Jake, the dog, was very possessive of his bone. . .

. . . except when Wesley got a hold of it! He did exactly what Jake does with it - in the mouth it went!!

On Monday, Mark's actually birthday, Mark grilled out steaks (fillet Mignon from Findley Market) and we ate on the back porch!

This is a little late, but had to post this picture. Kristin was overjoyed that Michael English was coming to town last week and just HAD to go see him in concert - so we did.

Exciting News!

par·ent (pâr'ənt, pār'-) noun: One who begets, gives birth to, or nurtures and raises a child; a father or mother.

On October 6, Aaron and I will happily be classified as the above noun.

Easter Weekend in MO

We had a great time in Missouri over Easter weekend! We really enjoyed being at home and seeing everyone.

It did take us 3 1/2 hours longer than usual to get to MO. We were stuck in a traffic jam in St. Louis due to flooding. Grr - we were aggravated, but not a thing in the world we could do but sit and wait.

We went to the town Easter Egg hunt on Saturday morning. I was assigned to go with Kelsey since Kaden and Khara were also in different age brackets.

All 3 of them really raked in the candy! They loved it (and I did too)!

And then the fun part - dying eggs!
"Patiently" waiting for the colors to be mixed.


Happy Easter!
(I took individual pictures of Karson. I'll post those later, or they will be on Jana's blog.)


I looked behind my shoulder on Sunday night during church and saw this - Kaden holding Karson. It was so cute, I had to snap a picture (without flash of course).

Have you hugged your plumbing today?

If your house smells good and clean - hug your plumbing. We are now very grateful for clean air. On Monday of this week, we noticed a very unpleasant smell as we both came home from work. After further investigation, we discovered it was coming from the basement. We went down to investigate and discovered standing "water" in the basement. I didn't think it was a huge problem, because it was raining SO hard and had been for a while that I thought the water just couldn't drain fast enough. However, as the evening wore on the smell got worse (as in MUCH worse) and we knew something was dreadfully wrong.

I emailed our dear maintenance staff and they took a look at it first thing the next morning. To make a long story short, the pipes were clogged and sewage was backing up in the basement - YUCK!! The 3 apartments in this building house 6 people, so you can imagine the smell. RotoRooter was here for several hours with no luck, so it fell the lot of our maintenance staff to dig it out.

This job was bad enough in itself, let alone the next catastrophe that occurred. The rented machine ended upside down at the bottom of our steps! Thankfully, no one was hurt (you can always replace machines; you can never replace people). So, the next series of pictures are over the course of the 3 hours it took for the tow truck, the bob cat, maintenance staff, several students, and many onlookers to right the machine again - all of this in the rain which turned to snow.

The view from our front porch.

making progress. . .

The slew of onlookers - our porch was full too. :-)

rain - turned to snow

finally!

Yearbook Ad

Since I am a photographer and yearbooks are full of . . . PICTURES I'm a huge supporter of yearbooks and I like to take out a full-page ad when I can. Kevin Moser designed this page for me.

Cute as a button!

Hannah came over recently for her 3-month baby pictures, and of course Matt and Erika came along. :-) She is such a cutie - here are a couple of my favorites.